320 Eric Zimmer: The One You Feed

When I try and contemplate my life from the heart of depression, everything looks equally bad and I'm unable to find any message. I tend to treat depression more now, and this is a very un Jungian thing to do, right, is I treat it almost like I would treat getting a common cold. I give it almost no psychological attention. I often refer to it as like the emotional flu. And I do what I would do if I got the flu. I would make sure I'm taking care of myself. So in my case, am I getting enough sleep? Am I get enough vitamin C? In my case, I'm like, am I exercising? Am I. Am I talking to other people? Am I eating well? Am I sleeping well? I'll do those things. And then beyond that, I just try and let it take its course and go away. I don't actually turn it into big, deep existential questioning. Depression feels very physical to me, which is why I treat it that way.

That's Eric Zimmer, and this is episode 320 of Wellness Force Radio. Wellness Force Radio, where we discover the physical and emotional intelligence to live life well.

You can have the same brain states as someone who's done an hour of meditation every day for 40 years.

There's a lot of losses that we go through, so the ability to be able to cope with those losses is very important to build skill in it, because loss will happen.

You know, you have to have spiritual courage to really grow spiritually, because if you really want to take guidance from your soul, you have to be ready to realize that many of the things that you're asking for guidance on, your ego has some kind of an addiction to or an investment in.

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Hey, Josh, thanks for having me.

I've been looking forward to this because we all tell stories in life and really your mission with the one you feed is built upon probably one of the most profound stories out there. And it's the Native American grandfather who's talking to his son and his son is asking him about wolves and he's saying, there's two wolves. One of them is anger and fear and despair. The other one is love, connection, trust. And the, the grandson asks his grandfather, you know, well which wolf would win in a battle? And the grandfather says, the one you feed. And I've told that story multiple times. I've heard it multiple times. But you have built this brand on this story and really this mission about giving people the power of choice. So just a true honor to have you on the show. And I gotta tell you, the biggest curious question for me is when did this parable come to you? Was there a point in your life where somebody fed you the love wolf, the joy wolf? What happened to make this story come through for you to build this movement on top of it?

Well, the time between when I first heard the story and I started the podcast was a long time. But I first heard the story early in recovery from heroin addiction. And it just landed on me really strongly then it was really clear to me, like, okay, I've got a pretty clear choice here. If I do these sort of actions. And it was pretty clear what I was supposed to do. If you do this, if you do this, if you do that, that's gonna lead towards recovery and health and all things that. And if I don't and I continue doing what I'm doing, that's going to lead to death and jail and all the other bad stuff. So it felt really clear to me, you know, and I think the thing about that parable that's so good is when you hear it, you immediately get it.

Everyone gets it.

Yeah. That's what makes a parable good, right? It tells a little story and you're like, boom. Oh, okay. Wow, that's really, really says a lot. And so it registered strongly with me. I sometimes joke. I'm not even sure I was feeding the bad wolf anymore so much as the bad wolf was eating me at that point in my life.

You were being eaten alive? Yeah.

Ye.

Who asked you, though? It was like a mentor or was it somebody that you were looking up to or was it a friend who told you the story?

It was just. I don't know, it was. I mean, I was in. I was in 12 step recovery. And so people are just, you know, sharing all during meetings and, you know, and somebody just told that story. I haven't, I couldn't begin to tell you who.

That's powerful because sometimes the messages that come through, we don't even remember where they came from, but they just stick. Yeah, they stick in there. And you're a behavior coach. You host a podcast. It's one of the biggest podcasts out there. And honestly, some of the guests you've had on there are dear friends of mine, like Mark Devine, and just learning from these men and women who have gone through the gauntlet themselves. And that's what you've done. We have a lot to talk about, man, just beyond your TEDx, the Battle of changing behavior and really these segments of anxiety and then addiction and then the solutions, the meditation and the way that you help people with your clarity process. But before we dig into that, let's go back to why you even think that heroin came into your life. Many people, whether you follow Gabor Maite's work or the hungry ghosts, go to addictive things because they feel a disconnection from self. They don't feel at home in their body. Was that the case for you? I mean, were you not feeling at home in your body, what actually led you, looking back, to addiction to heroin?

Yeah, I buy that theory that it's some form of disconnection. I don't know if I would have articulated at home in my body. Body is the way I would have put it. But at home in the world, I would say I didn't. And I had. I think I had depression from early on. I don't think I knew it then. And I. You know, basically what led me to heroin was. Was the fact that, like, just like a lot of kids, I experimented with drugs and alcohol, and for me, it did something different to me, and I was kind of off to the races with it. Right. And so started out pretty. Pretty simple and ended pretty, you know, pretty. Pretty low bottom for me. Right. I was. I was a homeless heroin addict. I was. I weighed 100 pounds. I had multiple felonies facing me. You know, grand theft, forgery, lots of, you know, I was looking at going to jail for a long time. So it was a pretty low bottom for me. But, you know, I think I could. I could speculate on this happened to me as a kid, and I know lots of different things that happened, but I think that theory of being disconnected is a pretty good one.

Yeah. And the disconnection starts because of either the environment we're in, or maybe we're not supported by parental figures, you know, or there could be a soul contract, too. I mean, this is curious, and this is why I love having conversations with other podcasters, because the way in which you've been able to interview people and pull out the nuggets is fascinating to me. It's an art form that I love being in the mastery of. And I'm curious for you, like, with all these guests that you've been interviewing, does your story or does your path align with anyone? In other words, have you seen your story be a mirror of somebody that you've had on your show? That's inspired you for sure.

I've definitely interviewed, you know, a decent number of people who have dealt with addiction issues in their own life. I've dealt, you know, I've interviewed a good number of people who've dealt with depression in their own lives. So, yeah, I mean, a lot of my guests are a mirror, and I might say all of them to some degree. Like, I don't have anybody on who I'm not deeply interested in. Like, if I don't look at their work and it doesn't resonate with me in some way, then I just don't have them on the show show regardless of who they are or so. So I feel a resonance with really everyone.

Yeah, this resonance is because we're all the same. Do you have a spiritual path that you connect with most? In other words, do you believe in high, higher intelligence? Do you have a God in your life? Like, what's that connection to you that drives you?

I would say most recently I have been on a pretty. I've been on a Zen Buddhist path most recently. That's kind of what first interested me spiritually when I was a teenager. And it's kind of what I found my way back to in between there all kinds of, you know, spiritual, but not religious. But I would say that my main leanings are towards a Buddhist view of the world and an understanding of the world and, you know, whether we believe in higher intelligence. In a sense, yes. Yeah.

What do you mean in a sense?

Well, Buddhism doesn't postulate, you know, Buddhism doesn't postulate there being a God. So. And Buddha and my understanding of Buddhism doesn't postulate that there is a personal intelligence out there that's working in the world. Like, I don't believe there's some external force that intervenes in my life. However, I do believe that the world, I mean, obviously possesses incredible intelligence. Because how we got from being, you know, everything that we see around us was at one point in time collapsed into the size of something that you could have fit a million of into in the period of an ending of sentence. And now we have everything and all this and the vast diversity and all that. There's clearly crazy intelligence at work.

There's something going on. There's something breathes us, something's breathing you. You don't have to breathe yourself.

Right, right. And so in that sense, yes. I just don't know that I'm a believer in that. That thing has a particular. It seems to have a direction towards increasing complexity. That seems to be. If I was going to say that the universe had a direction, that appears to be the direction. And I believe in that.

Yeah, that resonates with me too. I think about the way that we treat one another in the world. I can remember, Eric, like being a young kid, I was in an environment where my parents did the best they could. And I've done a lot of work to really understand how much I truly love them. But just seeing the way that their parents treat. Were treated and then their grandparents and it's just this big cycle of how people treat each other. I know that behavior change and human relations is a massive Topic that you pour over on the one you feed podcast. And what comes up for me in just looking at this broad spectrum of your work is was it like that for you in your environment growing up? Did your parents have a limited emotional intelligence skill set or what was that like for you? I mean, because this is really the lens of which you speak through on your podcast now.

Yeah. Pretty limited intelligent or emotional. Intelligent skill set. I would say neither of them. That was really an interest to theirs. It's. It's kind of a mystery quite where I, where I came from because I'm not very. I mean, I'm like them in some ways. I think they both battled depression in their lives, so I think I inherited that sort of naturally. But my general curiosity and seeking nature and wondering and all that, that just doesn't really seem to be. See that. Never seen that in either of them. So I'm not quite sure where that comes from. But yeah, definitely, you know, all the sort of standard things that, that today we know, well, you might not want to raise a child that way. Right. I had a lot of those. Right. And. And like you said, it comes from their parents. Which comes from their parents. I mean, it just, it just rolls downhill.

This is learned behavior. And there's many things out there like memes. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Oh, it's in my genetics. But we understand now. Man, there's a. There's so much fascination and so much deep science about epigenetics. You know, the things that get turned on and off when we're in environments. And environments are the people. So if we're around assholes, it's pretty easy for us to feel depressed. And I can look at the way that you lead people through coaching and I can only imagine the types of real life challenges that people use to gather evidence for as to why they can't be their highest actualized self. Is there a thread for all of us? Does it really come down to self love? I feel like the more I'm in this world of wellness, most self sabotage and most behavior change obstacles come down to people not actually feeling love for themselves. Would you agree with that or do you have other insight?

I think that there is a lot of truth in that. I think that the reasons that people don't actualize who they want to be in life are. There's a lot of different reasons. But. But lack of self love is a really big one. It's definitely up there. I don't know that I ever have sat back and really tried to catalog, like, what's the biggest thing. I mean, some of the stuff I see in behavior change with people, I would say comes down to just basic skills, like knowing how to go about changing a behavior and sustaining it. Like, those are basic skills. And I. And in a lot of cases, they don't have anything to do with self love or any of that stuff. They're just about, do you have the skill set? And so when I work with people in coaching, we sort of take it two ways. We start with the skill set, and then when we see how far that takes us, and then that gives us an opportunity to dig deeper into the things that I would. I refer to it sort of as emotional regulation. Like, in what ways are my emotions getting in the way of me doing what it is that I want to do or being who it is I want to be in the world? And so I start kind of, like I said, with skill set things I'd call very tactical. And then we use that to move us into deeper waters.

Yeah, and in the deeper waters, I mean, this is where really my curiosity lives, is in the deep down, because I understand the processes of behavior change. You know, whether you look at BJ Fogg's work or Charles Duhigg or Nir Eyal, you look at all these people that develop fascinating systems. Even Dan Pardee, you know, Dan Pardee talks about this space between knowing and doing. We've had him on the show three times. And that space between knowing and doing, there's something else there. There is this sixth element. There is this factor that plays in people having the strategies, having the coach having the thing that'll actually give them the information, the knowledge and the intelligence to move forward, bust through their block. There's something else, though, Eric. There's like this, I almost want to say, like emotional potpourri or like a spiritual potpourri. There's something else where people just disappear. Side that they're willing to go through the suck they're willing to go through. What is that?

I don't know. I don't have the foggiest idea, to be honest with you. It's one of. No, I do.

Yeah.

I mean, I, you know, I look at. Addiction is a big lens for me and. And I look at a lot. I look at life and I am very mystified. Why am I sober today and so many other people I know aren't? They're dead, they're gone, they're not sober. And I. And I can give a superficial explanation and that Superficial explanation was, well, I did this and I did this and I did this and I did this and I did this. And they only did two of those things. But that doesn't answer why was I willing to do those things? Why did I continue to do those things? Why was I able to see the gravity of my situation? And I don't know. I mean, this question sort of haunts me because I don't. But I don't think it's a question that lends itself to easy answers. Speaking of like, Gabor Mate, I sort of had this conversation with Gabor Mate a little bit around, you know, this idea of, you know, he's very much focused on harm reduction. Like, well, if I can get somebody to go from using heroin seven days a week to two days a week, that's pretty good. And I would go, yeah, I think that is good. I come from an abstinence model, which was, you know, for me, I needed, you know, it was full abstinence that allowed my life to unlock. And I sort of asked him, like, is that asking too much of people? And he said, for some people, yes. And I said, well, who? Like, aren't you selling some people short then, in that case? And he said, well, some people are just so damaged that their options are less than yours or mine. And that's a difficult truth to swallow. And I'm not sure that I fully swallow it, but there's some truth in it. You know, I can see this in, you know, the more trauma somebody has had in their life, the more likely they are to have serious substance abuse problems. Like, the science is just unequivocal on that. So, yeah, I don't think these answers are. I don't think there are clear answers. And then you. But then you'll see somebody who's gone through just stunningly horrific trauma who is way, way ahead of me. I mean, and so I just don't. I don't understand fully. Right. And I think that it's. It's one of those mysteries, and it's a mystery that makes me honestly sort of profoundly uncomfortable because since I don't understand it and since it does, and since it's so personal, because like I said, I know lots of people that I've been, you know, I've sat in meetings with, that I've spent lots of time with who are dead today. You know, they're not. It's not that they're not getting out of bed and doing their morning routine up to Hal Elrod standard, right? They're dead yeah. And so, you know, so. Yeah, it is. You're right. There is some mystery underneath all this, that if any of us could crack consistently, we'd be richer than God.

Man, this really touched something in me. And I can feel energetically it touched something in you too, because you mentioned a lot of the people that you have seen do the work, like actually do the work. It's not like they were avoiding it. I mean, they were wholeheartedly pouring themselves into it, and they're not here anymore. And there is this honoring of the mystery. And I'll never forget this. I was talking to a gentleman who's been on the show. He's a mentor of mine. His name's Paul Chack. And he said in the old days, when people would go to the shamans, they would be set and the shaman would ask them four questions. When did you stop singing? When did you stop dancing? When did you stop spending time alone? And when did you stop telling stories? When did you stop understanding the stories that one could tell one another? And it's interesting to me because a lot of your brand is built on this powerful story of the two wolves. And I can see now, in our society, the time for storytelling, why podcasts are so popular and why people are so damn hungry for the truth is because we're all kind of shaking our heads at this mystery.

Yeah. Yep, I, I agree 100%. And I think that I love that idea of asking those, those four questions. You know what, I would love to, you know, at different times, I'd love to see something like, you know, we have so much more data about everything now. Like, I'd love to see like shamanic success rates back in year, year 900. Right. Or, or, you know, it's just, it's, it's just, it's all very fascinating. Yeah, but I, I think it is, there is a mystery to it. And I think as much as, and you named some people, you know, B.J. fogg, James Clear, you know, Charles Duhigg, all these people who, you're right, they've done this incredible work on systems, and I think those systems are really important and they're a big part of it. And yet there is an element of mystery that goes way beyond that.

And sometimes for all of us, it's just the surrender to the mystery and not trying to white knuckle it and fight it. You know, I think I've had many people on the show that have either been through recovery or some sort program, but there is something very powerful about the way that Alcoholics Anonymous helps people on a global scale. Is that something you're still involved in to this day? Are you in any programs now?

I would consider myself, you know, I guess a member of aa, but I don't attend it very often. I mean I have a. I have 12 step programs saved my life twice and they saved the lives of a lot of people I know and they don't work for a good number of people also. And, and I don't know, you can debate kind of why that is also. But yes, I think I have a love of aa. I think there are some things that I would love to see 12 step programs do better. But at their heart, there's nothing else quite like them ever created in the world.

You mentioned this, which was really cool. Success rate for shamans, if that would have been possible. Right? That'd be really cool to see, like a graph of who's the best shaman. But a lot of tools that shamans use, you know, drumming, singing, dancing, plant medications, medicines, breath work. These are very, for some people, woo woo. Real, real fucking woo woo. I mean, it's like people don't want to go to the Amazon and drink medicine. Personally, I've been through dozen, a dozen or more ceremonies of ayahuasca, many, many breathwork ceremonies. And they've helped me a lot. You know, they've allowed me to be here fully present and connect with you and serve our community. How has that worked for you? Have you done any types of plant medicines or breath work that have really realigned you when you might have felt off course?

I have not. I did. You know, what we would consider plant medicine, or at least, you know, psychedelic substances, if we want to use that term. I know that's a term that's not as much in favor when I was younger, you know, early 20s, and, and I was doing it recreationally. And I will say that they were very profound experiences. Even in that context, even in the context of like, I'm just doing this to hang out and have fun, there was a profound experience aspect to them. I have not done them yet again as an adult, although it's something I'm somewhat interested in. And as a former addict though, I tread carefully around that stuff. Even though I know that in a lot of cases there seems to be some data that show that these substances actually can help cure addiction. I just know anything that makes me feel radically different than I feel is something that I could, I run the risk of gravitating to really, really more frequently than I should. But I am intrigued. I am certainly intrigued by the degree to which these things seem to be able to do a psychological shakeup and a reframing of things in what's potentially a powerful way.

Man, that is so honest. And I'm flashing back Luke's story, who we've had on the show, and I've been on his show. I helped him go down to Rythmia Life Advancement center, and I think he was 20 years in the. And so he had similar concerns. But what he found personally was this has nothing to do with taking drugs or going to a place where someone's losing control. It actually just took him back to what you and I were talking about with honoring the mystery and being okay in the mystery space. And that I think for all of us, if we can, no matter how stressful our lives are or what we're going through, I mean, people are dealing with real challenges, some of which the hardest things we could ever imagine. But. But going to these ceremonies and specifically what Luke was sharing was that he went to a place where he. He saw why everything had unfolded the way that it did. I mean, it was like looking back on life's timeline and seeing massive clarity. Is that something that really might draw you in the future towards going that route, potentially with plant medicines? Looking back and seeing the clarity, I.

Don'T know that that appeals to me, although maybe if it happened, it would. I feel like. I feel like my life has a clarity to me, looking back over it, that I'm kind of feels like it's sort of. I kind of feels like it has a coherent narrative to me. I think more interestingly to me is my. My Buddhist practice, my Zen practice is really about oneness experiences. It's about. It's about mysticism. It's about unity. You know, the. The core of. Of Zen Buddhism is like, well, things just aren't separate in the way they seem like they're separate. And I've experienced that. I've had awakening experiences without using any substance that have shown me that. But I mean, that. That intrigues me. That. That's the part that intrigues me more as well as I'm very intrigued by some of the data that seems to show that some of these substances are effective at depression. Because that's something that still creeps up in my life from time to time. It's still something that's sort of there. I feel like compared to where it once was, it's completely different, but a salient factor of my life. And so I think I'm more Interested in what it means in regards to my spiritual practice and my spiritual understanding, as well as from a depression perspective.

God, this brings up a huge question for me, and I've been dabbling into a lot of Carl Jung this year. One of my favorite quotes from him is, until you make the unconscious conscious, it'll rule your life and you'll call it fate. And gosh, I understand that on a. A logistical level, on a brain level, on a heart level. There are some times in my life, and I think most people can relate to this, where we do want to welcome in the sadness, we want to welcome in the despair, we want to welcome in whatever the darkness is, because it's like, hey, it's there whether we want to look at it or not. So why don't we just welcome it in, have dinner with it, see what it wants, give it love, and then send it on its way? But I think I feel triggered when it comes around too much and I'm like, hey, you were just here last week. Can you take off this week? How do you deal with this model in your life of welcoming in and looking at the shadow, doing work in the shadow, versus having the will and the strength to let the shadow go and to not even focus on it, and even sometimes meeting that shadow with anger? How do you deal with that duality in your own life?

That's a great question. And I don't think there are. I don't think there's simple. Boy, that seems to be the. I could just sum this whole interview up. There aren't simple answers. I keep saying that, going back to.

The mystery, Eric, but.

But it's because you're asking really pretty profound questions that just don't. That don't have a simple answer. So I'll answer that a couple of different ways. I'll start by saying, for me, there's a difference between what I recognize as depression and what I would call a lot of other negative emotions, quote, unquote, negative emotions. And depression, for me more than anything else, is a deadness. It's not a sadness, it's not an anger, it's not a darkness. It's just like. Like all the lights get turned down to, like 10% inside me. I mean, that's a. And so the problem with that. And I ask this question to people that I interview often, or if I ask, I might ask it outside the interview, but I'll often just say, like a lot of other emotional states, you can turn towards them and there's something to go into, you know, Sadness, there's a place to go. Fear, there's something to go into. Anxiety. But depression, there's. And what I've heard, I've gotten this answer a bunch of times. Depression's really tough because there's not even enough energy in it to activate anything.

That's profound, right?

And so for me, I have stopped, at least for now. And this could change. But in general, I have stopped really looking closely at. Does my depression have some sort of deeper cause? Because I've looked at the That a ton of times, and I can't seem to find any answer that makes any sense or. I do know that there are things I can do that make it less likely that I'll suffer depression. And if I do that, it will be less deep. And those things are very often very much physical things. Their exercise, their diet, they're connecting with other people, they're keeping moving, some of those things. So I tend to treat depression more now. And this is a very unique Jungian thing to do, right? Is I treat it almost like I would treat getting a common cold. Like, I give it almost no psychological attention. I often refer to it as like the emotional flu. And I do what I would do if I got the flu. I would make sure I'm taking care of myself. So in my case, if I got the flu, I might say, well, am I getting enough sleep? Am I getting enough vitamin C? In my case, I'm like, am I exercising? Am I talking to other people? Am I eating well? Am I sleeping well? I'll do those things. And then beyond that, I just try and let it just ride. I just let it take its course and go away. I don't actually turn it into big, deep existential questioning.

That is one very solid way to look at it. And I love the way you said depression is like an emotional flu. It's like we take loving care of ourselves until it passes. You know, this too shall pass. I don't know who said that. Probably some ancient master. This too shall pass, my friends. But there is some element of this where we're half beast and we're half spirit. Eric, right? There'll never be another Eric Zimmer ever. Like, you're that. You're a soul with a unique expression. There'll never be another Josh Trent. So something inside of us, this duality, this yin yang, there's something about. And Lao Tzu talks about this a lot. There's something about just meeting and embracing the dark and just letting it be the there and not making it a big deal. And just moving on with life. And eventually that darkness will either teach us a lesson or it'll go away. Do you find that to be true in your own life too?

I do. And I think I arrived at treating depression the way I treat it. And please, I want to be clear. I'm not saying this is the way other people should treat it, nor that it will always be the way that I treat it. Right. I don't know. It's just that I felt like when I'm in that state, I have tried to mine it for what it has to tell me and I can't find anything. Anything. I just. What I end up. And again, the analogy I make to, I think is useful to being sick, like if you're sick or here's another. This is actually a more useful example that more people relate to. Like, a lot of times, if you're awake at three in the morning, the world looks really ghastly and you can start to be afraid about all kinds of things. And you wake up in the morning, you're like, oh God, none of it's. It's not that bad. I was just awake at three in the morning and it was not a great time to be awake and it wasn't a great time to be contemplating my life. And I feel similar with this. When I try and contemplate my life from the heart of depression, everything looks equally bad and I'm unable to find any message. And also, I did a lot of work earlier in my life, 12 step work in the steps, a lot of therapy, a lot of digits, digging, a lot of digging. So that I feel like mostly I've unearthed the harder things that might be causing depression. Depression feels very physical to me, which is why I treat it that way. But so I think that can be a. I think it can be a really helpful model for people. I certainly think regardless of whether you want to sort of treat it as an emotional flu like I do, or you want to try and mine it for more information. I do think that what you said there about Lao Zo, Lao Tzu, and the general idea is that resistance isn't helpful. You know, I often quote, I can't remember who said it, but I use this, I say this on the show all the time. Suffering equals pain times resistance. And so, you know, I know that if depression is my pain, if I. The more I resist it, and it shouldn't be this way, it shouldn't be this way, the more I suffer, suffer. And when I can just sort of let it be, what it is. It's not that the pain isn't there, it's just that I don't make it worse. And so, and, and I've. I've. Over the, over the last several years, I've come up with a somewhat unromantic notion that sometimes the best we can do in certain situations is not make them worse. There are times that we are, we are emotionally hijacked to an extent, or we're in a place that the options to make it a whole lot better in that moment are not great. But what we can do is not make it worse until the moment passes and then we can engage it healing at a different time. And you can see this. A lot of couples will see this in their life. And you can also see it with a little child. There's a time where a little child crosses a point of being upset and angry, that no amount of reasoning with the child, no amount of lesson teaching with the child, none of it's going to work. All you got to do is get the child to calm down. And I think a lot of. I've been in relationships, you see this with couples a lot. A point gets passed in a fight where nothing good is going to come. Nothing. And so all that there is to do in that moment is like how in this moment, I can't make it better in this moment, right? Like, I can't teach my child not to throw a temper tantrum when he's at this state. So what I'm going to do right now is not make it worse, and then I'll look for a teaching moment later. And I often feel this way, way with our own emotional challenges is not making them worse. And I said it's somewhat unromantic, but if you look at. To the extent that a lot of us can make our lives worse by our emotions, it's not a small. It's not a small feat to be able to refrain from making things worse.

Man, there's a lot to unpack there. So you talked about the sickness, the flu analogy, which I love. I have actually never heard that the sick. This is really phenomenal to me because if depression is an emotional flu and we're taking care of ourselves, we still got the flu for a certain reason. Whether we're in the wrong environment or it's flu season or we're not taking care of ourselves, pain or flu or depression, aren't these all just guideposts? Aren't these all just reflection points for us to take an emotional inventory? In other words, to guide Ourselves away from pain. Pain becomes the teacher.

I think that's a useful analogy, but I only think it goes so far. And I'll tell you what I mean by that, because I think that if we're not careful, what we do is we turn really legitimate pain that people experience into nothing more than a universal lesson. And I think that cheapens it. And I think that, like, you know, somebody, you know, to be graphic and terrible about it, somebody right now is being raped right as we talk. Like, I don't like to position that as a guidepost for them in their own healing. Now, can they use that experience? Sure. But should they have to? Probably not, at least in my view of the world. And so I'm always really hesitant to turn. I'm always hesitant to turn what I see as legitimate, unescapable pain in people's lives into something better. Again, I'm a firm believer that in my life I have turned all my disadvantages into advantages for myself. But I don't like to believe that it happens that way for, quote, unquote, a reason. And so I'm always a little bit hesitant. The other thing I worry about too is I think we have the spiritual world in particular, we have a tendency, if we're not careful, to. For me, to try and become something completely different than human. And what I mean by that is we try and get to a place that every. Every. We just don't. There's no more bad or suffering or any of that anymore. And I think that part of life is that sometimes it just hurts to be a human.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Being a human can be so challenging and so rewarding.

Yeah, exactly. And so I do agree with you. On, On. On a. On. I totally agree on one level. And then on another level, I only like to go so far with that. If that makes sense.

It makes sense. I think really what the, you know, the edges of our conversation really point towards the universal solution. And I'm not going to paint a picture and say this is going to happen in our lifetimes, but we're moving in this direction. And what I feel is this. Whether you look at Buddhism or whether you look at any religion, the good parts of any religion, the good parts of any faith, they're all pointing towards unity, consciousness, they're all pointing towards oneness experiences, like you said. And I think if we all know that, if we're aware of that, whether we're logical or whether we're spiritual, if we all can get to a point in humanity where we are all aware that we are one. We're stopping this illusion of separation. We're treating people with love and kindness as if we'd treat ourselves. That's really where we're working towards as a society. And I think the depressions, the sicknesses, and really the blackness that some of us go through in life, I think these will occur less frequently. I don't think they'll ever stop in our lifetime or in humanity's existence. But there has to be a better way, Eric. I mean, there has to be a better way for us to live.

You know, no argument there. And I think that's a. I think that's a beautiful vision, and I think it is. I think there's a lot of. I think there's a lot of truth to that. There is a whole lot of suffering in the world that seems wholly optional. And what I mean by optional, as in it doesn't have to be that way. And it's. I think what's. I think what's interesting is. And that's why I like that that sort of suffering equals pain times resistance. I love that idea because it makes a difference between pain and suffering, right? And pain. Like, here, I'll give you a great. A great example of my own life. So within one year, a couple years ago, I had to put two dogs to sleep. And I loved them. I mean, at a way, probably like a dog lover would, right? They were fundamental to my life. I had to put two of them to sleep, right? And so that was an enormously painful experience. Like, I cried a ton. And I almost feel like anything short of that would not be like, real life. Like, I love them. The cost of love sometimes is pain, like losing the dog. But what I didn't have was. I wouldn't consider. I suffered over it. And the distinction I would make there is I just took the pain for what it was. Something I loved isn't here. I misunderstand it, but I didn't go into, oh, it's not fair. Oh, why did he have to get cancer? Why does it happen to. To me in one year? Like, that's so terrible. Like, I didn't add anything to the pain. I just took the pain for what it was, which felt to me like in a totally noble human emotion. And so I just. And so that's the sort of stuff that I don't see going away, that I don't think goes away, but I don't think that that is the problem. Right. I think, like you're saying, I think that if we had a world where the pain that we got was just the sort of pain you got when somebody was sick or someone you loved passed. And to your point, even understanding universal consciousness makes that better. I don't know that even my understanding of universal consciousness would still make me not sad that my dog's not here with me, even though I, you know, like, I know on some level he's not gone and. But on another level he absolutely is gone, right? Like from, from my day to day experience, he's not here. And so, so I think that I agree with you 100% that I think that that unity, consciousness and all this, we. There's so much harm that we inflict on each other and that we inflict on ourselves with our own mind and our own stories and our own things that can be, that can, and God, I hope does get better and eliminated over time. And then I think the nature of being a living creature has some degree of pain in it, but I don't see that as a problem. I see that as just part of the rules of the game and I don't see them as bad.

Yeah, it's really touching. I'm feeling a lot of emotion from your story because I think everyone can connect right now to somebody that they love that's not here anymore, whether it's a pet or a family member or anyone else else. And that is the universal human shared suffering that I experienced actually in Mark Devine's event, you know, the 20x, you do this 14 hour crucible, Eric, they're spraying you with water. It's like this Navy SEAL training and all of our shit comes up like, I don't care who you are. Like when you're cold and tired and hungry. It's all the things that flare the ego, that just make the darkness even darker. And what I got the most from that entire event was that, oh, we're all suffering together.

Together.

It's the shared suffering that when we're, when we're pierced with the blade of adversity, that's where the blood of gratitude and of love for ourselves and other people around us can actually come through. And that I think is what exactly you're talking about. Life is going to present us with some really challenging things. Things that, that can make our blood run cold, things that make us so sad. But that is actually the richness. It's this emotional bandwidth. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this. The emotional bandwidth that we really operate in as a human being. Can we ever experience ecstatic joy if we haven't Explored our shadow. Is that even possible?

That's a great question. I don't. I don't think in any sort of lasting way. No. You know, and this is a question that. That I have asked and I remain. And I don't have any. I don't have a good answer for. But I have. I have talked to some people who consider themselves, you know, quote, unquote, awaken people, you know, spiritual teachers who are like, I have. I have awoken, you know, I have seen the true reality. And so I'm always like, well, what is that kind of consciousness? Like, what's it like to be like that? Like, you know, you. You. You know, one of. One of the people is a teacher, Adi Ashanti, who I admire enormously. I've interviewed him a bunch of times for the show, and I've. I just think he's brilliant. And. And, you know, I've had some conversations with him about this. I'm like, well, what. What. What is this? You know, we're all talking about getting to this unity consciousness, this awakening. Well, what's that like if you're there? If, you know, for people who say they sort of live there, right? And I hear different answers from different people. I hear some people say, like, well, nothing ever bothers you again. I'm like, well, God, that just seems like, is that really even being human at that point? Like, I don't know. Because if nothing bothers you, how can you be, you know, how happy necessarily can you be? I don't know. Maybe. And maybe that's just a dual view in my mind. Adyashanti said something once that really resonated with me. And to me, this embodies what I want it to be about. I don't know if it is, but it's what I want it to be about. And he said that awakening gives you the freedom to feel things, not the freedom from feeling things. And I thought that was kind of powerful because what he was saying was that. That he's better able to feel the full range of human emotion as someone who's seen the full thing. So you're able to feel it deeper. And I think that's a really interesting idea versus maybe some other people who are like, well, yeah, no, nothing ever bothers you again. I'm kind of like, well, that seems. I'm not even sure. That just sounds kind of numb. I don't know. And I don't know the answers to these things. I think they're very fascinating questions. I know that when I've had Awakening experiences that were pretty profound and lasted for a certain amount of time. What I will say is that about. It seemed to me about 90% of the psychological suffering I carried was gone, just gone. It was a different way of being. And so I do believe that we. It's funny, this makes me think of someone asked me recently, or somebody was saying to me recently, like, well, you know, aren't you worried about becoming too mindful? Like, people can't be mindful all the time. Like, that's not the. And I said, well, no, I don't think the goal is to be mindful all the time. Obviously, there's a time you can be.

Mindful about not being mindful.

Yeah, yeah. And there's a time just to be planning and thinking. And we could argue that's mindful in a way. And I said, but sure, for me. For me, it's like I'm maybe mindful 1% of the time. I've got like 98% to go before I really need to worry about it. Like, I feel like the. I really need to work on the other end of the equation before I start worrying about being too mindful.

Right.

You know, and. And. And a similar idea, I think, before I need. Before any of us need to worry of running out of grist for the mill, you know, there's. There's plenty of it. But I do think that. I do think that to sort of, in a very long way answer your question, that the broader range of human emotions is probably better for us, I think so.

One of the things that really compels me is this curiosity piece. And you even talked about it earlier in our conversation, where you don't really know where your curiosity came from because you didn't necessarily see it in your parental examples. And I feel the same way. I'm like, man, I have been this spark of curiosity, curiosity all day long since I could literally remember taking my first breath. And I think for some people, I remember there was an interview that Larry King was being interviewed, and he said, I'm just always been curious. I've always just been curious, Josh. I don't know what it is. And I thought, me too, me too. That's always been my primary motivator, and I'd love to hear what you feel about this. Do you think in some way that the spark of curiosity, curiosity is actually the whole. One of the whole purposes of life to be curious, to be in a state of wonder? It's how children come into the world. It's how people live older if you look at the interviews of centenarians, they're all curious still. Do you feel like the cultivating curiosity is really a way to achieve fulfillment and even to have a samadhi experience?

Yes, absolutely. You know, you first phrase, that of whether, you know, being curious is, I think you might have said, is part of the purpose or. And again, purpose doesn't resonate with me in the same way. But I do think that curiosity is one of the key traits that unlocks so many of the things that most of us would say are worth having in life. Whether that be awakening, whether that be fascination, whether that be awe, whether that be wonder. Curiosity is a remarkably good way too, of lessening our own emotional pain. The more curious we can become about it, the better able we are to take a step away from it and look at it in broader and new ways. So I'm a huge fan of curiosity. I think it's really important. And it makes me think of when you mentioned when we were talking about depression earlier and I said that the lights kind of go down. That's one of my first signs. Like, oh, I'm all of a sudden, like, I can't think of any music I want to listen to. I can't think of any book that sounds good to read. And that is like the polar opposite of me normally. Like, put me in a room where there's a bookshelf and like, I can't almost focus on anything El else till I know what's on it. Like, that's my nature, you know? And yet when. When depression creeps up on me, that kind of goes away. And that's for me, where I kind of. I feel it. It's. It's one of my. It's one of my warning signs.

Oh, the analogy is big for me right now because we can set up our lives so that we don't get the flu and we can maybe set up our lives and stack the environment in our favor so that we can have depression less often. But I think a lot of it comes to this awareness practice you're talking about where it's like, hey, if I'm noticing my curiosity is gone. And I've noticed there's some other things that are typically there that are gone. And I can't pinpoint a reason it's okay to give myself permission to just take loving care of myself and not try to figure out why I'm depressed, rather just focus on the other side of the coin. Is that a strategy that you implement in your own life to literally Focus on the other side.

Totally, totally. Yeah, I think so. And that just made me think the way you said that there, I thought was so good. Cause you kind of brought it back to a very early question you had around. Is self love really the heart of a lot of this? And I think yes, to kind of go all the way back there. It self love is both the way that I prevent depression and the way I treat it. You know, it is. It's the self love that I do that I take care of myself to prevent it. And then it's the self love I give myself when I have it and an understanding I give myself and other things. So, you know, it made me think of that because, yeah, it's a. That's a pretty big component of. For me and I think a big piece for me also with it is allowing it just to. Allowing the depression to be there. Not in sort of in two ways. One way is just allowing it to be there because it's uncomfortable and unpleasant. But the deeper, more egoic allowing is allowing me, somebody who should be so evolved, interviewing 300 people, sitting all these silent retreats, allowing me to still have that very human failing is another thing. I have to work at that I don't start going, you shouldn't be this way. It shouldn't be this way. You should be better. You should be fixed.

The should and should not monster when it.

That's right.

When it rears its ugly head, man. I'm going to link this in the show notes as well as your podcast. And specifically the interview that you were talking about. What was the gentleman that you interviewed? Adashanti Adyashanti?

Yeah, we've interviewed him several times, but yeah, they're great. He's. He's you. I think you'd really resonate with what he has to say. I think you'd like him a lot.

I loved his downloads through you. I mean, we interviewed Dr. Judd Brew on the show. You've had him on. You had some powerful people that really are cultivating this curiosity and honestly fortifying a safety zone for people to explore what the hell we're doing here on planet Earth? We're all trying to figure that out, man. So I just have a couple more questions for you. And the first one is this curiosity piece. How do we set up our lives so that curiosity can grow and also our curiosity is protected?

That is a really good question that I don't know that I have an answer to.

And I like to ask questions like that because I think of them in the Moment right here, right now.

No, it's a great question. I think for me it is like. I will call curiosity a value. And like a lot of our values, sometimes we need to reflect on them from time to time and we need to remember that it is a value and we need to try and remember to bring it in. There are times that curiosity comes really easily to me. Right. And I'm just naturally curious. And then there are other times that I have to remind myself to be curious. Like being in emotional pain is a time to remind myself to be curious. And you know, for me, and maybe, maybe one of the ways I allow curio that I give curiosity, I encourage it in my life is I follow it when it shows up. I just, if it's there, I'm like, well, I'm interested in that. I'm curious. You know, several months ago it was like table tennis. That was, was the thing.

Yeah.

It's like, well, that's ridiculous. I'm a, you know, I'm a. I'm a grown man. And yet I was like, that's what it was. So that's what I went and did. You know, I went and trained for a while with a, with a table tennis coach because that I just follow what lights me up.

Table tennis is no joke, man. I mean that's like an athletic feat. I've seen this really. They just get after it.

It's incredible. Yeah, yeah. So I use that as a. That's the sort of thing that. That part of me would be like, no, we are not going to do that. That is. Yes. But I just go, you know what? That's what's lighting me up right now. That's what's interesting me. I'm going to trust that and go, man.

I remember reading Steven Pressfield's book the War of Art and he was making this, this connection between. We're so spoiled that we even get to pontificate about why we're here. We're so spoiled that we even get to have like this is why it's so beautiful and so meaningful to have this conversation not only about the one you feel, but just the fact that we have time that the people that are here with us, Eric, listening and being in this conversation. We've come in this human evolution where we used to have horse drawn cart and buggy and we were making bricks out of bricks for houses and rocks. And now we're talking on a computer and who knows what's going to happen in the future. I just get the sense and I'm curious how you feel about this. I get the sense that we are almost like an early 20s. If humanity and human evolution was a lifetime and we looked at it as a lifetime, I almost feel like we're 21 years old. We've been through enough of this shit. We understand that it's okay to treat people with love and it's okay to treat ourselves with love because we're not purely in survival anymore. But yet there's still these underpinnings on an economic level and on a really societal energetic level where this illusion of separation is still preached. You know, how do you feel about where we are in human evolution right now?

Well, assuming that we don't drive ourselves off an ecological cliff, I think we are extraordinarily early. I think saying that we're 20 or 21 might even be. Might even be overstating our age.

What age do you feel like we might be?

Well, you know, I'm only doing this. I just. I recently interviewed a guy named David Christian who does something called. He calls it Big History. And he's basically surveying history from the Big Bang all the way through human time, trying to put it into one story, one book, which is a pretty remarkable thing to do. And when you look at things from that scale, you go, wow, okay, well, the universe is 14.6 billion years old. Look at how much newer we are and. And how much we're. How fast we're changing. Because to compare who we are today with humans of 50,000 years ago almost doesn't even seem like a reasonable comparison anymore. And so what I think it's. There was a. There was a fact in that book I found fascinating. He said that. He said, all right, 14.6 billion years. Just pretend that, you know, it was. It was 14.6 years ago the universe started. Right. That mean what? That you put all that into time. What you would then call the fossil fuel revolution, since that started, which is causing obviously real potential huge problems. That was two minutes ago. And so you think about how fast everything is changing from. For us, it's, you know, I don't know how old we are, but I think we're disoriented.

Okay, so maybe we're approaching, like, being a teenager. That might be a little closer on the timeline. Eric, this has been such a great conversation, man. We have to have you back again to get more into the nuts and bolts of behavior change. Because I feel like where you and I went was an incredible place, but it was really. It was really of service in multiple ways. Listen, to this podcast. Again, reach out to Eric on the social. How can people connect with you?

OneYou Feed.net is kind of where, you know, you can find the podcast, you can find the coaching, you can find our social network stuff. It's all there. It's just spelled out O N E Y O U F E E d dot net.

And we'll link all these incredible interviews. You've had Eric Tivers. You've also had. Oh, you've had Lauren Zander on the show. So Lauren's been on the show a couple times. A lot of the people that I think we really want to learn from are the people that have been through that discussion, you know, that parable multiple times in their lives when the moments really matter most. And as parting guidance for us, if we're experiencing right now, if somebody listening is experiencing the dark wolf and the white wolf, the good, the bad, the fear, the love, how can you speak to them from a lens of wellness? What can you tell them about your definition of wellness? In other words, what does wellness mean to you in those moments where we choose to feel the wolf?

Another great question. I would say that, you know, for me, wellness is. It's not a. It's not a static point, but I do tend to believe that if we look most of the time at what we are, where we're spending our time and where we're putting our attention, we have a pretty good gut sense whether that feels like it's leading us towards wellness are not. And. And then we can always change. We can always change that, even if it's only a little bit. Like, a lot of people will say, well, I can't control what I think, which is absolutely true. Right. But I can. I can redirect my thoughts 3 times instead of 1 time. I can redirect them 10 times instead of one time. Right. Like, I believe there's always a positive step forward for us wherever we are, no matter what's happening. I'm not one of those, like, oh, you can be anything you want to be kind of people, but I believe we can always improve, always take a step towards greater wellness and wholeness.

I love that you said with your last word, wholeness. That's, I think, the recognition of the oneness, the wholeness. And whether someone's spiritual or analytical, I think we all know that guidance system lights up. Eric, like you said, when we just have the inner knowing, we know when something's true. We know when we want to move towards a direction. So if you guys are feeling that knowing Go to oneyou feed dot net. There's books, there's programs. There's Eric's program about the one you feed. Clarity, process and make sure that you check out his work. So, Eric, thank you for coming on the show, man. Deep bow to the conversations you're having, the space you're holding for this higher intelligence so we can understand what we're doing here and how we can actually live our life well. So thanks for coming on the show, man.

Yeah, deep bow right back to you. You're really good at this. Those were, that was a. That was a great conversation. Thank you.

You're welcome. Feels good to receive that. Okay, you guys, until we see you again, Wishing you love and wellness. Hey, thanks for listening to the show, my friend. Everything you learned on this podcast starts with your morning practices. So from over 300 world class guests, we pulled together six simple yet powerful morning practices down into a 21 minute system guaranteed to increase your vibration and the way that you feel every day. Get this free powerful guide over@wellnessforce.com M21 and if you love this show, share it with somebody. Share it with somebody that you love or that you care about. You can support the show easily by leaving us a five star review on iTunes. Just go to wellnessforce.com review or if you're on your phone, just tap it. Hit the link in purple that says review this podcast. And the journey does not stop here. We're continuing this discovering process in our private Facebook group over@wellnessforce.com group. You can be a part of it. You already are. All you have to do is join us@wellnessforce.com group and I will welcome you at the door. Now go out into your life and live your life well. And until I see you again real soon, I'm wishing you love and wellness.